No, I would not call it lying. Hawayo Takata was a great storyteller, and for years her account of the history of the system of Reiki was treated as exaggeration. As more Japanese sources have come to light, a surprising amount of what she said has turned out to have truth in it.

The memorial stone beside Mikao Usui's grave in Tokyo tells the story of his life and of the system of Reiki: his difficulties, his experience on Mount Kurama, his work after the Great Kanto Earthquake, and that he taught about 2,000 students before he died. It was written by his students in the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai, many of them naval officers.

Reiju is not more powerful than an attunement; it is different. Reiju is a spiritual blessing, a ritual in which teacher and student move into the same open space together so the student has a direct experience of what it means to be Reiki. An attunement, which probably evolved from Reiju, is a Western ritual for doing something to the student: giving symbols and mantras and conferring a level.

Mikao Usui asked his students to sit in meditation each morning with their hands in gassho and recite the five precepts. The Japanese word for recite, tonaeru, also means to chant, so you can chant them or say them.

The symbols and mantras of the system of Reiki were introduced to help people who found it hard to sense energy. Drawing a symbol and chanting its mantra gives the body and the eyes something physical to do, which brings the mind in. They are training wheels: once you can sense energy, you can let them go.